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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You mean I can grow my own food and not have to go to the store? Yeah, make the best of your backyard. Can I do it in the moon? I don't believe Fresh Direct goes there.
Chapter 2: Can you really grow food on the Moon?
Coming up, all the things you can do to grow food in your backyard on StarTalk Special Edition. Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk Special Edition, which of course means I got Gary O'Reilly. Hi, Neil. Chuckie baby. Hey, man. How you doing? I'm doing great. Lord Chuck Nice. Lord Chuck Nice. All right.
That's right. We got a special edition here. What do we got? This is on the future of growing food. I like it. Ooh. Because I like food. Keeps me alive. So, see, I would say it's the future of growing vegetables because you're not growing a cow anymore. Well, not right now. We're not growing right now. We're not growing a cow.
There might be a cow plant. Maybe we will be planting cows one day.
Genetically modified. Okay. So that you can grow them in a pot. That's right. I would love it. Go water the cow.
So Gary, take us into this. What do you have? All right. Let me just stop laughing. Right. At-home farming or homesteading has seen an uptick in popularity in the past few years, which begs the question, where can we grow plants? Is there a limit to where we can? We'll get into fake light versus real light. Soil science and the science of why our guest...
who you'll introduce shortly, can grow a whole farm in his backyard. How big is his yard? And with some of us can hardly keep a cactus alive, this guy's growing a farm in his backyard. Amazing. Where does the future of farming and sustainability actually take us?
I'm ready to get all in this because I think about this topic all the time. Right. Because when I go to Mars... Yes.
You don't want to eat poop potatoes?
No.
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Chapter 3: What are the challenges of backyard farming?
I don't know. But first, how big is your backyard?
Yeah. The backyard I'm growing in now, it's about a third of an acre lot. Oh, my gosh. It's not the back 40.
No. A third of an acre. Yeah. We never got that 40 acres, by the way. Oh, shit. Just trying to let you know. I'm still waiting on mine.
Okay. Well, he's working out the third of an acre here. I'm delighted to learn that because that means it's hope for people who don't have large real estate that's out there. And you can have a garden anywhere. Yeah, because when I think of farming, I think of huge fields, factory farming, big aggregate business. So tell us, where do you come to this with what you do when you're back one-third?
And let me tell you, people, when you hear Kevin answer, Kevin does not look like he grows anything. He actually looks like he grows weed. Like, marijuana. That's what, like, in a closet. Yeah, he's got the gimme hat and the unshaved face. Yeah, he's got the beard. I mean, he looks like a totally, like, laid-back, chilled dude. And he's the guy in the corner that said, I need some weed.
You got some weed?
Yeah, exactly. Give me a dime bag.
Exactly. Is he still there?
All I'm going to say, guys, is I've grown a lot of plants.
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Chapter 4: How do plants adapt to different environments?
A little secret for you guys.
And there's a reason why marijuana is called weed. All right. So just give us an overview of what you got going in the back one third.
Yeah, sure. So, I mean, it didn't start out that way. I started growing in an apartment. Then I moved to like a small kind of front yard lot, like 15 by 30 feet. I grew enough in that space to poorly survive off for about a month. But we could talk about that in a bit. I do, yeah. Yeah, now I'm on a third of an acre. And because we have a YouTube channel, we grow a lot of different crops.
We're not necessarily growing it like an urban farm might, but we definitely could. Like there's enough space there to grow everything. hundreds and hundreds of pounds of produce per year. And if you're living there with yourself and a partner or something, that's enough produce to live off of. But I've got, let's see, 30 fruit trees.
Did you say 30 fruit trees?
Yeah, 30 different fruit trees. Excellent. About half of them are citrus because it's San Diego and you can pull citrus off there. And then I've got maybe like 40 or 50 different annual crops that I'm growing depending on the season.
Remind me, annual, you have to replant every year.
Annuals, yeah, they're going to live and die in a single spring to fall sort of cycle.
Whereas perennials come back every year.
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Chapter 5: What is the role of soil in plant growth?
They suck. Because I tried to plant one and they hate me. But anyway, gardening is probably one of the most relaxing, rewarding endeavors that anyone can partake at, period. I don't know why I'm saying this. You're happy now, aren't you? This is the first time I've ever told anybody I love gardening.
Yeah. I'm here for this, man.
That's the first time I've ever done it.
Kevin, are you old school? Drill a hole, plant a seed, water something, walk away, come back, rinse, repeat? Or are we into some very more modern techniques?
Are you inventing new methods, tools, and tactics?
I wouldn't be as bold as to say I've invented anything all that crazy in the gardening world. Definitely some weird tactics. We put a video up a couple days ago about growing zucchini vertically, which is a cucurbit squash-style plant, so it wants to sprawl out, which can be annoying. And then there's this whole meme in the gardening world of, leave a squash on your neighbor's doorstep day.
Because by the end of summer, you just get so many squash that you're sick of them.
Okay, so you're not being kind. You're being, take my shit, I wouldn't have eaten anyway.
Absolutely. 100%, yeah.
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Chapter 6: How does hydroponics work for growing food?
I go, can I do this? And remember back then I was in a 15 by 30 foot grow space with like some raised beds and containers and stuff like that. So I gave myself that amount of space. And then I also utilized like one of my friend's little terraces. And I say, okay, I want 30, I'm giving myself 90 days of lead time. So by June, I'm going to start the challenge.
So I have to survive from June 1st to June 30th off of everything I can either grow, fish, or forage for. Because I knew right away, just off the quick math, I was like, there's no way I can get enough calories out of this space for a man of my size. I think I needed 78,000 calories for the month.
What do you mean by fish? Use the fish as a verb. What do you mean?
Like literally go fishing. Well, that's allowed? I allowed it in the challenge.
If you can fish, then- No, but hold on, hold on, hold on.
This is why, this is why. Because, okay, name a plant with a ton of protein.
Well, you know, what's interesting- Legumes. What's interesting is that potatoes are like one fourth protein. The problem is they're a way higher percent water. So if you took the water out of potato, they have- You have a dense protein source? So potatoes are just full of water. That's the problem. But otherwise, yeah. Well, you look at nuts for protein. Yeah, so you didn't grow nuts.
Antonio, that's a nut country, isn't it?
I mean, but I had 90 days. So I can't grow a tree from scratch, right? So it had to be produced from that moment on, right?
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Chapter 7: What are the benefits of vertical farming?
And how'd that work out? It didn't. How about that? They were already tilling the soils to dig up the soil to plant the apple.
Yeah.
See? So at first, it sounds clever at first. Right. But it's not. So you were saying try to double duty on the chickens. If they just poop on the top, does that get down into the soil or does that get washed away?
Well, they'll scratch through. So like, you know, my hens, they'll come out in the garden and they'll scratch through like three, four inches deep sometimes, hunting for little bugs and grubs. And so, yeah, it's not like the most efficient method.
My hens, you heard that? These are my hens. My hens. Well, they are.
Thank you. Don't come at my hens, Neil. You can come to my address for some produce. You're not getting my hens.
Do you name your hens and then slaughter them and eat them?
I don't eat them. If I ate them, I probably wouldn't name them, which probably sounds irrational, but it just is what it is.
That's what we're just checking here. They do give eggs though, right?
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